For a couple of years, I have run the Web Engineering Meetup Düsseldorf with the help of a couple of friends (primarily Dominik Siebel). In August 2017, we created a satisfaction survey and sent it to the group. Here are the results.
The survey was anonymous, and 49 people responded in total.
The first answer was submitted on August 23, 2017, at 13:30:19, the last on November 06, 2017, at 23:48:26.
Side note: We run the meetup in the trivago HQ in Düsseldorf.
What could be improved on the location side?
- More seats
- More parking spaces
- Open the pool table
- Sometimes I hear a noisy fan
- More available power outlets
What could be improved on the organizational side?
- Start punctually. Some people come from far away and need to leave on time
- Try to start the talks on-time
- Maybe prepare one or two questions per talk in advance to get the discussion going if there is an awkward silence
- Give an estimate of when the talks start. In case someone is in a hurry, they can skip the networking if desired.
I would like to hear more about …
I tried to categorize the answers a little bit:
General
- Best practices, personal experiences, learn from previous mistakes and grow
- The problems and challenges in everyday business
- Frontend – Workflow, Rollout techniques (Deployment, live-updates, DevOps)
- Backend Development
- Open Source
- Clean Code
- Basic stuff you can use for your reasons … not for professional development for companies
- Machine learning
- Architecture
- Performance
- Data Science
- Domain-Driven Design
Languages
- PHP
- JavaScript (mentioned 4 times)
- TypeScript
Technology (Frameworks, tools)
- NodeJS (mentioned 2 times)
- Docker (mentioned 2 times)
- Webpack,
- KeystoneJS
- Common software like Apache Webserver
- VueJS
- Firebase
- Hadoop/HDP/H2O
- Frontend & Backend Frameworks
- MySQL Performance
Meetup formats
- Explain like I’m five
- Frontend/Backend slot within the evening
The options that were cut-off above are of the people (networking), I like to learn something, Gets me out of the house/office, My Boss (Andy) told me to.
General Comments
I modified the comments slightly for reading purposes.
I think all talks should be in English. This is a very international community and especially web engineering is completely English speaking, so German talks put a lot of people off.
Keep up the good work :)
It would be cool to have something workshopish sometimes.
You’re doing a great job!
I could attend more often if it is not on thursday or monday.
More than one 45 minute talk on one Meetup would be great.
It’s the beginning of a new philosophy and vision of learning and professional development.
Good work!
Very nice. I like the ambivalent title of the event. The organizers could improve their English though. :-)
Thanks for your good work!
Keep up the great work!
Would be cool to have you in other Citys, like Dortmund :) || some longer weekend meetup, with multiple talks to a topic
Thanks for organizing these events!
Thanks for your hard work of organizing the events and constantly improving the gorgousness. ;)
Speaking about the results
Thanks for all the answers. We organize the Web Engineering Düsseldorf Meetup (WebEngDUS) for you. And without your feedback, we can’t improve.
The results show that we are doing quite okay right now. The location and the organization seem to fit. Other things, like more parking spaces, we can not influence, but more information and accuracy on the talk duration and the start of the talk can be done and will be done.
The choice of topics seems to be in line as well. What people want to hear about is spread across all areas. Sometimes it is hard to get speakers for specific topics, but we will try! If you would like to talk about a topic at our Meetup, contact me! In the meantime, we continue with the wide are of different topics as we did in the last few years.
The majority of visitors want to learn something and connect with other people by attending the Meetup. And this is what we want to achieve. Share knowledge and build a community. This result makes us proud.